The Bureau of Justice Statistics collects and disseminates statistics about crime and justice in the United States. These statistics are presented in a wide variety of reports and the datasets the reports are based on are also available.
To find out the most recent information from BJS, go to What's new at BJS. Much of this information is available in electronic formats that are accessible through the Internet.
In addition, information is presented below about how to order paper versions of our publications and disks and tapes containing BJS data.
Press releases
All of the BJS Press Releases can be found in the Press Releases section of the Publications & Products database.
BJS publications
Electronic versions of many BJS reports are also available on the net. To find the publication you are interested in you can look under the appropriate criminal justice topic on the BJS home page. If you know the name of the publication, go to the publications list, which is in alphabetical order.
The electronic versions of our publications are presented in two formats: in ASCII without tables and graphics and in portable document format (.pdf) as published with graphics and tables. Many tables from our reports and some additional data are available in the .wk1 format, readable by most spreadsheet software. In many instances, the spreadsheets have been grouped and compressed into files using the .zip format to speed downloads. Except for ASCII documents, our products are in formats that require interpreting applications you need to install on your computer as plug-ins to web browsers or stand-alone only applications. Additional help on locating the free versions of these interpreting applications is available.
To order BJS publications
BJS publications are available to view online for free and are not available in hardcopy. However, black and white photocopies of many BJS publications are available to order from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Clearinghouse. Visit the NCJRS OJP Publications page to order online or contact NCJRS for assistance.
In addition to BJS publications, the Clearinghouse provides—
- BJS mailing list information
- criminal justice statistics upon request
- custom literature searches of the NCJRS Database
- referrals to other sources of crime data
- data assistance from information specialists at the Clearinghouse.
Data files and codebooks
The BJS archives data files, documents them, and makes them available on the net through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan.
In addition to online Internet access, data files and codebooks can be requested by telephone or mail from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.
Call or write:
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data
ICPSR
Institute for Social Research
P.O. Box 1248
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
USA
1-800-999-0960
1-313-763-5011
Ask Archive staff questions via Internet: [email protected]